Thursday, June 28, 2007

Abstract



Good things. Immersion. I painted with about 15 others all day, went home exhausted at 4, slept, woke up and painted for a couple more hours.
This class was for acrylics, but she said you can use watercolors. The technique: lay down a slick medium first so that whatever you paint on from that point on is quite removable. It does not work with watercolor, because watercolor does not dry permanent like acrylic. If you go to add more color on top of yesterday's paint, yesterday's paint dissolves and mixes into the new pigment.

So let's see what happens. It was all experimental for me anyway and the first time learning abstract on purpose. I am not planning to paint using these techniques at this time, but I wanted to learn about design and whatever else might be helpful.

I looked at Carole Barnes' website and saw strong design. I asked David Dewey if he knew of her and he didn't but he said go ahead.

I think everyone enjoyed it. First day our instructions seemed to be to play in the paint. In and out the side door went the paintings, out to dry and back in to layer up again.

Carole is a good communicator and had lots of quotes, books to recommend, pictures to show. She kept moving, no lulls.

The process: play with the paint, put down the first washes of color. Let it dry. While that's drying start another. Begin to add more, lift off. Lifting methods included scraping, wiping, stamping, brayering, scratching, rolling a toilet paper roll over it. Basically adding texture of any sort.

The idea then is to add design elements to it all. I think I stayed in chaos and just kept playing in the paint in some of my pieces. She works on several at a time. Not my goal, but it is what I do at home, too.

But at least you have something to do while the paint is drying.

One of the nice women announced that there was a daddy long-legs in the bathroom and that she had named it Charlotte. I wonder if she would think less of me because I sent Charlotte for a drowning lesson - after she was already squished. Am I bad for not letting all God's creatures cohabit my space? I didn't tell her. The little brat in me wanted to tell her just to see if she'd report me to PETA.

Lots of red-rusty-orangy brown came out in my paintings. I put cerulean next to it with Verditer blue in it. Yum. I covered up the bright yellow and opera pink she started with. Nor did I favor any Thule blue. I kept trying to do what she was doing as much as I could without acrylics but it finally hit me it wouldn't work the same way, just do something in the abstract realm. When you put transparent watercolor onto the sealed surface, it beads up and won't stick.

What happened on several paintings was that I would see a form and get an idea and follow up on it. Then I would build the image around that idea.

Example, at one point when I was lifting color in swirls off my page, it looked like a fetus, so the painting ended up being of my pregnant daughter. I found it emotional to work on. I painted out the alarming red background and put in a soft blue cocoon around her to protect her and cushion her from harm. I felt like crying at times...the joyful excitement of her becoming a mom, and the knowledge that she will have pain, not just in delivery but in raising this child. I wish I could shelter her from the pain.

Another one, again begun the way Carole showed us on the first day with bright yellow and pink. I added in shapes around the edges and at one point it reminded me of my walks with the dog out in my old neighborhood, through the very dark woods and out under the power lines. Early after my husband's death, I would often come around a corner and be hit by a big yellowy glowing sunset and it would make me gasp, because it reminded me of what I saw when he died. I would immediately start to cry. In those days I used to always cry, yellow sky or not, when I got to the path where there were no neighbors to see me.

So hmmmm, that painting became the point at which we'd walk out of the woods into the open area and in this painting there is a beautiful yellow sunset. What surprised me is that it is emotional to paint such things.

I will to go back to painting the way I have been, recognisable, but with economy, trying for beautiful color harmony and learning to design the space on the page.
But this experience will affect my work. Possibly the most valuable part is being with other artists.

The second painting posted is IKEA on a Saturday...don't go there unless you love mobs and chaos. What a fun place. I miss it. I laughed a lot working on that one.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Don't Know Nothin'






Lake Wobegone ND

My sister, father, cousin, nephew, nephew's girlfriend, nurse and nurse's son were all there when I arrived. We had the run of the Inn right downtown, Victorian charm.

We were on the third floor and took our suitcases up the outdoor steps in back because it would have been pretty hard to get them up the circular stairwaay inside, probably 18-20 inches wide, hardly room to put a foot onto it.

So Father's Day weekend was supposed to be Rally in the Valley. There were pictures on the front page of the paper and captions, but no schedule of events or where or what about anything. don't know nothin.

Apparently they had been trying to find out where things were happening since they got there a few days ago, but no one seemed to know. After a while they suspected that it's a insider event and that we from outside were not wanted there. very strange.

I came on Saturday evening and had been up at 3am and 4am the past 2 nights, so I fell asleep with my clothes on up on my bed....I heard the fireworks but was too tired to go watch. I think they viewed them from the landing at the top of the outside stairs. After that there was apparently a thunderstorm. I heard some noise but I was too tired to care.

We took Daddy to the house he grew up in. He gets energy when he is here. He walks and does not faint. If the nurse says, are you tired, do you want to rest, he says no are YOU tired? She took him to the park and was a LONG way from the Inn and said we can take a taxi for $3.00. He said no, we can walk a little and rest a little, walk a little, rest a little. At home it's once around the circle and he's done, bored.

So Valley City. I woke up early and searched everywhere for my coffee and tried hard not to wake my dorm-mates (5 of us in the upper room sleeping) but I had to unzip my suitcase in more than one place. It was scissors I was looking for and finally went all the way down to the kitchen and found a plastic knife and took it upstairs only to learn I could pull the coffee open with my fingers. No one else got up except nurse for 2 hours. I read my Bible and prayed and then walked around the neighborhood. Such a tiny town, NO CARS; I could have walked down the middle of the streets and not bothered anyone. Many charming old houses, my favorite was painted light blue-green.

Long about 11am it dawned on me that it was Sunday, and I wished I had gone to church. I saw people coming out and even if there were a later service I would have wanted to have gone home to change clothes.

I have never lived in a small town really.

Nurses son attracted the popular girls in the front yard of the boy who apparently was not friendly with these girls. So they are hanging around flirting with him and the dad comes out drunk and yells at them to get out and throws a rock at nurse's son. We think we'll be front page news tomorrow on the police blotter, since that surely tops "snapping turtle reported in middle of highway; officer removes it."
Poor kid ... the police came by to interview him. Apparently he was here last year with my dad and his mom the nurse and made friends with the kids here and had been emailing with one of the girls. Interesting.

Well, we didn't see ourselves in the Dont Know Nothin Journal but neither was the police report in it, so maybe they only do it once a week.

There was a house a couple blocks over for sale by owner dirt cheap so we looked at it. Sister and nurse were ready to sign but all I could see was that every surface needed replacing and it was ugly and not that big. price was too good to be true. The idea of having Daddy up there every summer, though, now that's a good one...get him away from the monotany of home. His wife and all his siblings are dead and only his kids remain. I told sister I could never get my older kids to spend their precious little vacation time in North Dakota! No mountains.

So Binford, tall graineries, and cement factories, a ball park? No, a bull riding ring. Small houses and a neighborhood around Daddy's house. Oh, he says, Uncle......long pause.....I can't remember his name, lived in that house. The owner is there and lets us look inside. The kitchen cupboards made by my Farfar (father's father in Swedish) are still funcioning like new, precise fit and original hardware still working. Two other built in cabinets in the living room made my him.
'
Daddy cries a little and says this is the best part of the trip. We drive up and down many of the streets in the neighborhood; I stick my camera out the window and snap more charming pictures.